Dolla Dolla Bill

Freddie works for a prestigious company known as Liquid Form, a supplier of ink used by government contractors to coat the outside of dollar bills. This ingenious ink then preys on people with weaker or stronger immune systems (depending on the dosage of the week) causing them to show symptoms of a common cold, then die some days, weeks, or months later. These switches in dosage allow for a randomness that keeps protest and crazy speculation away from Liquid Form’s front door. Freddie’s told that this liquid is a necessity for population control, and Freddie believes it with all of his heart. Not only does Freddie work for such a company, but he is also one of the population that exhibits a very weak and fragile immune system; he was the child of a mother that abused a substance or two during her pregnancy. So for that reason, Freddie does not work on the weeks that the weak-targeting formula is being produced. But, due to unforeseen circumstances that had been piling up in the form of bills, Freddie had to take a couple of shifts during the wrong week. And even though during these shifts Freddie tried to be careful, Freddie still found himself distracted at one point with the sound his desk fan makes. It was during such a bout of distraction that he dipped his left pinky finger in the clear mixture that sat in a small cup on his desk waiting for his approval. He sat astonished. How could he be so dumb? Who could help him? How long did he have? Was there a protocol for this in the training module? If only he’d paid attention to those boring training modules. Rushing out of the room, he looked to the left, then to the right. There were all the familiar doors that he passed regularly on his way into his office, but to whom these offices belonged, he couldn’t say. To be perfectly honest, he couldn’t remember ever even seeing anybody in his actual department. Random employees all just sort of communed from wherever to fill up the break room for lunches and snacks around noon. They didn’t ever have reason to communicate with anybody outside of their higher ups (who usually called them). Coming up to the closest one to his left, he knocked in a calm manner that didn’t really jive with his current situation. “Hello?” he said. “I have a question about the product and I was hoping that you could help. Hello?”

The Lowly Servant

Once in a castle far away, a woman had a wish for good fortune to come to her. As she was just a lowly servant, she had no belongings other than a broken vase she kept a herb in, a small wooden box she found while out strolling one day. The box was ordinary and bore no embellishments or decoration; but it did hold what she considered to be her most prized trinkets: one autumn leaf, a single copper coin and a key.

While she worked, the servant thought of what she would have to do to repay the one who would grant her wish and hoped she would be kind as servants rarely got much time out of work. That night the servant went at once to bed, tired, as her knees and hands ached from the harsh work she had done during the day. When her head hit the makeshift pillow, she closed her eyes, nearly drifting into blessed sleep only to hear a voice beside her."You wished and I came, girl."When the servant opened her eyes, she saw the strangest sight she had ever seen: a lady tall and well-built, wearing a black leather corset that showed off her figure, a flowing skirt and boots...and she held a whip. Her fairy wings elevated her as she spoke. "But the wish you made has certain consequences, so, as a result I need you to give me your most treasured possessions as payment for that wish."The girl thought of her broken vase and the box. "I'm afraid I am only a lowly servant, Lady. I have no riches, only a vase with a herb in it and a box full of my things."The fairy smiled, waving her whip around, wondering why she held that when fairies usually held wands. "Where I come from, everything holds value no matter what it is. What does matter is that you trade it for something else."She wondered why she had wished and whether she would get it. The fairy stood there before her ready, so she must have been able to grant her what she wanted most of all. "Will you grant me my wish?" the servant asked, feeling most nervous.

Dinner on the Ground

We rose to bake biscuits and wash the quilts Grandma made her last year of life. We rose to whisper prayers, comb our hair, and promise a day of joy, not strife. We rose to collect our flags and flowers into bundles tied up for the truck. We rose to load everything and ourselves, huddled like ducks in the back.The War between the States ravaged our farm and our state long before I was born, but I remember it with my family once a year, every year, come Memorial Day in May. The county comes together at the cemetery for a potluck of fried chicken and corn, sausage and gravy, collards and kale, custard and peach cobber, crab and Old Bay. We visit the fallen soldiers, like my great-uncle Steven and his not-so-secret lover, the lover my family only came to recognize after they received that fateful letter.Sometimes Mama and I sit on the porch braiding ribbons and twisting wreathes the week before the gathering, the week before the dinner on the ground, the week before I watch my Auntie Jolene wring her hands as she grieves because she still recalls when things were not so civil between the North and South. But this year we are too poor for wreathes so we focus on feeding the mouth, not the eyes, and all our flowers—necks cracked, heads falling—were found.As we break our bread, Daddy says he heard a report of a new war in Europe on the radio, one greater than the last, and that he reckons we'll be visiting far more graves in a year.

Burke and Hare

A corpse is a corpse of course of course, but defining murder involves as much wordsmithery as the trickery required in performing the very act, not to mention becoming a pro body herder.Imagine the winding alleyways of 19th-century Edinburgh, ripe with real blackness and grime, the breeding ground for swine, the playing place of hungry whores and their desperate johns. Why, such is a site for crime and slime, just the site for the evil Laurel and Hardy to strike.Smother the face. Suppress the chest. No knife, no gun. No blood, though plenty of sweat and sometimes tears. The Royal College thanks you, you gentlemen, you fools.There are no heroes here, only victims of two kinds. The first plainly being the deceased. Yet the killers suffered victimhood from their own avarice, assisted by the sort of friendship that binds two scam artists, two hustlers, two pawns.Burke and Hare—horrifically together as one in the name of fortune and medical revelation, but mainly what goes click and clank and pays the rent.

The End

it’s not that I missed you when you leftit’s just that I couldn’t stop thinking about all the thingsyou left behind, all the dependantlittle creatures in your house, left to fend forthemselves, trapped in their fishbowlsbehind locked and closed doors I keep thinking about your goldfish, picture themfloating lifeless in their bowl, the long-noseddolphin fish I picked out for yourtank, the baby iguanas posed on their perchwaiting fortheir handful of crickets, the cats you adopted pawingfrantic at the doorknobwaiting for you to come home. I wish you had left me a key

Holly Day was born in Hereford, Texas, also known as “The Town Without a Toothache.” She and her family currently live in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she teaches at the Loft Literary Center. Her published books include Music Theory for Dummies, Music Composition for Dummies, and Guitar All-in-One for Dummies.

Mansplain

I was a dude in distress. Stuck on the side of the interstate while cars whizzed past me, I whipped out my phone to find it dead. Again. I got out of the car and sat on the hood, trying to look hapless and unthreatening enough for someone to stop. It wasn’t just that some jagoff had sideswiped me into the medium; it was that the impact had flattened both of the driver’s side tires and I only had one spare. And if I’m being honest here, I didn’t even know how to change a spare tire. Being the dashing son of media royalty meant nothing if you had to get your hands dirty, amirite? I was thinking about hoofing it to the next ramp, when the whoop of a siren startled me. When she got out of the car it was like that scene from Wayne’s World where everything goes all slow-motion and “Dream Weaver” starts playing in the background. She was a bit taller than me, and her police uniform hugged her curves in ways that made me consider a life of crime. “Need some help?” she said, her aviators glinting against the bright sun. “Uh…just a tow, probably.” “What happened?” “Got sideswiped and popped a couple of tires.” “Get any plates?” “Too busy cussin’.” I grinned and tried to look charming. Her radio buzzed and she called my hit and run in, then said that a tow truck would be along in a little while. “Thanks, Officer…” “Cinder.” “Do I have to wait here, or can I convince you to let me take you for a cup of coffee?” “I’m on duty. You should wait with your car.”

Limerent Objectification﻿

I.I am your Muse,Your obsession,And you are My faithful shadow,Tracing My every step,And worshipping each morsel of Earth that is graced by,The mortal Aphrodite who came waltzing out of your dreams,Entrailing carnations all the way,To enlighten your world with my gaze,And grant purpose to your every breath.II.I embody love poems,Enshrined in the secrecy of tattered notebooks--Lovelorn lamentations,Inked in your finest blood and tears,Enthroned upon your cluttered desk.Each letter, penned,To alleviate the burning languor,Of a life without My presence.In the far corner,﻿A half-full bottle of vodka waits to pacify,The ebb and flow of your emotions,With torrid waves of nostalgia and ignorant bliss,That crash upon the jagged shores of your mind,Because most nights, you drink to Me.III.I am the brightest star on your horizon,That cosmic sparkle in your eye,Which compels your gaze and enlivens the sky,With My brilliant beauty.Beholding such sterling splendor, you struggle to fathom,How I could possibly manage to exist.You sigh as you pour another drink to Me,But in the aftermath of your drunken torpor,You’ll awaken to the sight of the bleeding heart bouquet,That you almost had the nerve to (anonymously) mail to Me.IV.As you wander the cobwebbed corridors of your heart,Lost like you are when you,Recall the luminous wilderness in My eyes,And summon the phantomess of My memory.She speaks in banshee cries that sound like your voice,As you sigh a wordless toast to Me,And to another lonesome night,Of chasing your liquor with cyanide.As you scavenge the stardust in My urn,To intertwine yourself with whatever remnants of My Being,That may have survived the great schism of our realities,But once again, I’ve ascended unto higher heavens,Too far away to grasp,And far too near to forget.As you watch me shining in the sky,Know that I shall dwell there for the remainder of eternity.#Poem #Poetry #CreativeWriting #Verse #GhiaVitale #Muse #Love #ObjectOfAffection #MortalWorship #Obsessed

Anti-Feminista

You don't tether me; I will tether myself—and only in this case because I want to be tied up.May my wrists peel and bleed until numb and raw because I am forever bound to my cause.Curse the styles and curse the trends. This love is an eternal love, a mad and yet sane worship.Unchaining us would be akin to ripping the entwined vines above Tristan and Isolt's graves.Who cares what the schoolyard boys say? That inane tittering is what makes them boys still.I don't kiss you because I hate men; I don't kiss you because you, child, don't challenge me.Katy Perry got one thing right and that was her battle cry: "You're going to hear me roar!"And yet she still refuses to lace herself with the words "feminist" and "feminism."It's not on every rack in the mall. There's no cute T-shirt. Do or Don't? (Don't.)Semantics, you say? But the power stems from the letters we cherish and fight for.

Maybe it's not a tether, but a lake, and we must all drink long and deep until satisfied.The water runs clear and pure, and each of us has a vase we made from fleshy earth.

"Feminist" is the mantra, the password, the Alpha, the Omega, the vines on the headstone.

Human Nose

An expected sense of excitement really does its best to offset the chance that the actual excitement might be just as great. This is how I’m feeling about my new nose. I’ve been staring into the bathroom mirror for the last hour, feeling my arm tire towards dead, as I use a wash rag to polish my brand new nozzle to its expected gleaming perfection. It’s not working. It just dulls in comparison to what I had planned. I can’t even smell with the damn thing. I stop my worrying, and perk up, deciding that my friends would be the final judges on how I look. Bob told me not to bother, but what does he know? I’m sure Alice, Craig, or Beatrice will all shower me with support. I hope so at least. I took a pay advance from a job that I didn’t expect to still be at in a week—making bolt cutters isn’t exactly the line of work that I thought I would be in for when I was made three years back. It’s made me somewhat apathetic to think about things like this. Thats why I think Alice, Craig, or at least Beatrice will all say something supportive. Give me that at least. I go into work strutting in a way that I wouldn’t normally. I’m trying to get attention, I guess. I pass Barry at the check-in stand, and give an over-exaggerated swoop of my head after signing in on the clipboard. What was that for? I calm down a bit, feeling that I’ve already taken this charade for approval too far. I walk over to my station and Bob is waiting with a smug look on his face. “Told ya not to waste yer money on that garbage. Why wouldja wanna look human, anyhow?” The first line of pieces starts moving down to Bob’s position once I push the green button behind his lopsided head. He wasn’t as privileged with who built him as most of us were. I would think because of his head, he would be the first to approve of an upgrade. Before the pieces get to Bob, he slaps me on the shoulder and says, “Ya know I’m just pullin’ yer chain. It looks classy on ya. I couldn’t pull it off.”